In May 2017, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Tech Lab launched Ads.txt (stands for “Authorized Digital Sellers”) in an effort to reduce unauthorized reselling and domain spoofing, a fraud tactic in which unscrupulous publishers, ad networks or exchanges purposely obscure the nature of their traffic by manipulating ad space to resemble legitimate websites. Ads.txt, in addition to initiatives like Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (TAG) Anti-Fraud program, are just some of the ways the advertising ecosystem is attempting to clean up the space and combat fraud.

The Globe and Mail’s recent article by Susan Kranshinsky Robertson, “Domain spoofing: The advertising industry fights back“, touches on how domain spoofing negatively affects both marketers and publishers, and what the industry is doing to fight fraud. Exponential’s vp of global publisher development, Rick Abell, weighs in on the rise of ad fraud, and how more and more publishers are beginning to adopt Ads.txt:

“Look at how the ad industry has transitioned. Previously, you had advertisers working directly with publishers. Then, for a while, you had the ad-network model – one trusted third party that was in the middle facilitating that relationship. Now, it’s a very crowded space. You have all these third parties in between. In many cases, the advertiser and the publisher have grown pretty far apart. … Any lack of transparency creates less clarity in terms of what is happening in that ad chain. Fraudsters are going to thrive in complex, convoluted environments. We’ve seen publishers already get requests to put code on their Ads.txt page [authorizing a seller], and they’re not familiar with that partner – that’s good. You should know who all your partners are in the value chain.”